My Experience as a Chaplain - Part 1 — Rolfe Barnard

That's still not the key, is it? That's it. Shackled by a heavy burden, Knee full load of guilt and shame. I have to turn in the Bible this morning to the book of Hebrews, chapter 9. There's 22 of Hebrews, chapter 9.

The Necessity of Blood for Remission

Just one verse. But almost all purified with blood, and apart from the shedding of blood, there's no remission. They are greatly influenced experiences. Many years ago, I went to New York City to preach for the first time.

I was a little boy, 5 and 6 and 7 years old. I devoured Horatio Alger's books about the little boot black that had lots of trouble, but he wound up being president of the bank. In those days, the youngsters read stories of deprivation that were blessed by success the day they read about Hopalong Cassidy.

I don't know what else. And I had never been to New York City, and I didn't know they were just full of people. I remember there was a pastor of a Baptist church that was actually in Brooklyn. In desperation, he called the deacons of the church together.

A Desperate Baptist Church in Brooklyn

They hadn't had what we call evangelistic series of services in 25 years, and they were in a desperate condition. The pastor was saying, what on earth can we do? One of the deacons said, Well, let's try to have what our father's mother used to call a protracted meeting.

It used to be the glory of America. And the pastor said, Well, but who on earth could we get to come and lead us? And they sent me an invitation, and I went, with some fear and tremor. And I was amazed to find out that after the first service, the pastor got up and said, Now, you people who are present this morning, you may be allowed to come back on Thursday night.

There won't be room for you. You give room for somebody else. And then that night, he told those people they could be back on Friday night. And each night he graduated. He left room for three services during the two-week meeting for young people up from 16 to 20.

Nobody could attend. Well, I shall never forget the impression that was made on me by that meeting. It was a small church, about 10 million people in New York City. And one evening after the service, some of the young people asked me to go down to the drugstore for a drink.

And I questioned them. I said, I don't understand this business, youngsters just flocking. I wish you'd been here overnight. They said, We wish we could, but there's no room for us. And a young man said to me, Brother Preacher, in New York City, there are two places to go.

The God's house or the hill. Just about so. People who think they can walk with one foot in the spirit of this godless age. And the other in the house of God going headed for trouble. I didn't make the world, but it's just about settled down to what that young man said.

Ministry Among the Down and Out

I had another impression in New York City later, I went and ministered a week in the power of mission. I've had the privilege of ministering most of the awful mission. I mean the mission dealing with the down and outs in many of the cities.

Everybody that's a church member ought to go and live in those missions and witness to them. Stay down on the skid row and see what sin, if not checked in this life, will do. It's not a pretty picture of men and women already in the empty room of hell living misery.

Every last person I've ever preached to in my life in a mission desperately wanted to be saved. They'd do anything on earth if you asked them to do any of the motions we got. But something's happened down the line.

Their will is completely gone. Their understanding is void. That makes an impression. Then my first pastorate when I was the only preacher in a city of 5 ,000 people in all of town in this state, 26 months, 16 months the only preacher in town living with death, walking the street, the main street of that city when a man would have to walk on the outer edge of the sidewalk is on the main street.

The poor fallen women were in their cubbyholes and they'd reach out and catch hold of the garments of a man as he passed by if he's a little too close. Not a nice picture. Sin doesn't wait to ruin men in hell.

It ruins them down here. My experiences as a chaplain in the Second World War were the most shocking experiences I've ever had. And this morning I want to speak from the text without or apart from the shedding of blood.

There is no remission. Are you familiar with the fact that in the Army in the Second World War soldiers, at least in the Air Force where I was and I'm told it was everywhere, were assembled together to hear some chaplain or some vicar preach to them that every man who shed his blood to defend his country in America would be saved.

I heard that many, many times. It was drilled in our voice that if a man shed his own blood in defense of his country that God would take him to heaven from that bloody battlefield. I preach on my experiences as a chaplain because of the shocking things I discovered.

The Gospel Versus Patriotism and Military Sacrifice

Everybody else, I guess, knew about them but it takes me a long time for God to show me anything. I entered the chaplaincy because I desperately wanted to preach to men who many of them were going to shed their blood for the country.

Friends raised money before we got into war and I got a big tent and I went to near towns adjacent to army camps and the influx of undisciplined and unregenerated church boys whom we said goodbye to and let them go into the army as we were preparing.

Their undisciplined lusts were already making hell holes out of every city in reach of the army camp. And the pastors didn't know what on God's earth to do. The army sent the trucks into every city every Saturday night and load them up with your daughters to go out for the soldiers to hug on Saturday night in the dancing floor.

And that was all patriotism. And of course, human nature being not as nice as we've been taught, all hell was breaking everywhere, morally speaking. So the pastors would always help me in the meeting.

And I found out that if you could confront young men who they had in a sense knew they were being trained to go beyond and be killed or killed, that if you could confront them with the gospel of Christ and the Christ of the gospel, some of them would listen to you.

But I had to go out of that business because evangelism was not considered essential to the war effort and every Baptist preacher that got gasoline enough to visit the hospitals owed it to the Catholic regime that has power in America because they're united.

And they put so much pressure on the government that they had to give them gasoline. So Brother Jackson, he wasn't old enough to don't guess, but this fellow's got some sense. You remember, the pastors got a little gasoline.

And they wouldn't ship my equipment on the trains. And so I said, well, if I can't preach to the boys that are not yet, I'll get inside and I'll hold my nose and I'm going to try to preach to those boys.

Not that I'd be the only one, but I'm just responsible for my little ministry and I want to invest it in the ministry of preaching to boys. So I got in the Army. I got in the Army. And I found out, I found out the desperate moral religious condition America was in.

Chaplaincy in an Army Shaped by Violence

I worked first-hand with Catholic priests and Jewish rabbis and Baptist preachers and Presbyterians and Methodists and just named them. I lived in the atmosphere of training boys to kill. I lived in an atmosphere where every Army officer understood that when that boy got over there and the bullets got to flying, he'd be scared.

And the only way on earth to make good soldiers out of them is to treat them so rough that he wouldn't care whether he lived or died. That's the only way you could go over the top in the First World War.

You needn't tell me people are scared. By the time they make a soldier out of him, he'd just as soon be dead as alive, you know, and to hell with the consequences. I was brought face-to-face that I have lived in two worlds and no one is near that.

Justness is an unknown word. And this generation is going to hell with a little religious profession while we rot in moral corruption. Sunday morning, easy going on at salvation. In the hour of an abandoned desecration of God's holy day.

We didn't recognize Sunday in the Army and there didn't anybody else in America. And under God, the reason I say to you that unless we can build some strong churches, not a whole lot of little old two-bit churches standing for some little old peckerwood gospel and going to tear in a passion that pieces over one little aspect of truth.

Most of the little churches have started like that. But some church standing in the gap whether anybody listens or not feeding the salt to keep America from being swallowed up by the forces of hell that are blowing all about us.

Ladies and gentlemen, we keep on like we're going to hell. Holy day. Rush for the body and worship of God. We'll be as rotten as Rome when God had to spew her out of her mouth. There are two things that are the absolute curse of the moral tone of a nation.

What it does on the Lord's day and what it does with its money. I saw the promotion of fornication and adultery in the army. A Roman Catholic supervisor, a chaplain, had 200 chaplains under him. I was stationed in Montgomery, Alabama.

Sexual Immorality and the Failure of Religious Leadership

30 ,000 soldiers. All of them training to be either flyers or navigators or whatever you call it, bombardiers in the Air Force. The finest young people. You had to be nearly perfect physically to get in the Air Force.

And my old supervisory chaplain said, Brother Barnum, you work harder than any 50 chaplains I've got. Reach more men, raise more hell than all my 200 chaplains put together. He said, I don't understand a fellow like you.

He said, are all Baptists like you? I said, no. Don't guess the world could stand a Baptist like me. He said, I don't understand your philosophy. And I explained, talk. He said, unless a soldier can go to town on Saturday night and get him a quart of whiskey and a blonde woman, life ain't worth living.

He was a supervisory chaplain. Your boy was in there. Some of your men were in there. Once a month I had to make a speech. The squadron commander and one of the physicians and the chaplain make a speech.

The squadron commander, the physician, would get up and tell your boys how. They might have sexual intercourse without contracting venereal disease. And then I was supposed to get up and tell what the Bible said about adultery and fornication.

And then always on the table were hundreds and thousands of contraceptives piled up. And when the physician would give his instructions and the chaplain would talk about what the Bible said, the squadron commander would get up and cuss a little bit and say, for so-and-so, so-and-so's sake, don't let us waste this money here.

Fill your pockets full. And did you know that in the army if a boy went to town and hurt himself physically and he could not prove that he had carried with him a contraceptive, he lost his pay all the time he was in the hospital.

What are you talking about, Brother Barnum? I'm talking about two world wars like that. When we threw the Bible away. When we forgot God's holy day. And when we trained the manhood of America like under God, bud, the chances are you're going to wallow your filthy way in the pit of moral corruption and go on to hell.

You don't quit this little two-bit stuff and begin to agonize after the mercy of God to apply the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the only thing on earth that's got power to clean up a filthy guy like you, Baker.

You don't quit this little Sunday morning junk in this little tent in God's house if I haven't got the belly aching to sitting on the rail of the spectator. Just to sunk in this moral corruption that's going to drown you.

The Church's Failure to Make Christians

All the degradation of the ministry. A godly preacher. Oh, my soul. The public preachers of America. Their sin is slaying a thousand now. Morally corrupt religion. Easygoing politics on Sunday morning to make us comfortable in our sin.

That's American religion today. And I saw, as I had never seen before, this terrible truth that our churches do a nice little job of just failing at one point. They're failing at making Christians out of people.

The army, of course, divided religiously into three classes. Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. Everybody wasn't a Jew. It was either Catholic. Everybody wasn't a Catholic. They'd put in the lump of a Protestant.

Somebody asked me about whether you could be a secret disciple or not. I don't know how to handle it. But I won many Catholic boys to the Lord. But I told all of them not to tell anybody because they could have been court-martialed.

And I could have been court-martialed for actually talking to a Roman Catholic boy about his soul. Did you know that? That's reading over your radios and your televisions and your big papers and your big denominational magazines and the very atmosphere, religiously speaking, now.

We're all so broad-minded now. For the same thing. I don't want to go there. That's where everybody's religious now is headed. And I went to Harvard University to learn how to be a chaplain. And the head of the school, the chaplain of the morning, would say, Men of God!

That's Catholic, Jew, and Protestant. Be seen drunk on the streets. If you have to get drunk, do it in your own room. Chaplains making the rounds, or the chaplains making the rounds of the hospital every Monday morning in the V .D. department, the venereal disease.

And I've heard many a chaplain cuss a boy out, not because he committed fornication Saturday night, but because he contracted a disease. No, nothing wrong with the sin. The thing that broke that Catholic preacher's heart was that that boy couldn't be a good soldier for awhile.

Deliverance from the Present Age

Oh, boy! You mean to tell me this generation's nice? You reckon you're going to escape it? When Jesus Christ came to deliver us out of this present age, and that means the spirit of this awful age. Salvation's no good unless it does that.

Brother, there's an ungodly age to be delivered out of, sure as you put my hat on. Your membership didn't do a bit of good, but two weeks after your boy got in the Army, unless Jesus Christ was enthroned in his heart, he's chasing women and getting drunk and gambling.

That's right. Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians and Catholics. Oh, that didn't matter to nothing. And the boys that knew the Lord took out like sore thumbs. They'd follow me around, and I'd feel like a little puppy dog.

Crowded out, sneered at, defeated. Holy Joes, they called them. The chaplain was supposed to be a good joe. I will forget the first time I went to the officer's dance. I got a letter from the hard-drinking, hard-cussing Episcopalian colonel.

He'd been in the Army 30-some odd years. He was my dear friend. I tried to win him to the Lord. They put a little water on my head when I was a baby and confirmed me when I was 12. But it didn't do no good.

He'd get drunk as a boiled owl every Saturday night, but he had some sort of something. He'd get sober up, and he was sitting right on the front seat of the chapel. He gave me lots of favors, but I couldn't land it for the Lord.

He sent me, of course, I got an invitation. You get an invitation from the colonel. That's a command. I was supposed to show up at the officer's dance at 9 o 'clock. Well, I knew I'd have to do that when I get in the Army and all that sort of junk.

So I dressed up my best bib and took her, and I never had been one of those things. I got there at 9 o 'clock. Nobody else there. About 11 .30, here they came in. And about 1 o 'clock, I had preached five times the next day.

1 o 'clock, I did like poor Joseph. The colonel had him. But the preacher, you see, Brother Jackson, was supposed to be there to sort of put a godly atmosphere on the situation. And that's all the churches, most of them, are doing now.

They're just sanctifying this ungodly age. All right, let's see you folks with belly aching and bear with this godly pastor here, a church that folks drive ten miles out of the way to get close to. They actually believe the word of God, an application of the merits of the life laid down of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Blood of Christ as the Only Remedy for Sin

For a little of the bigger and the tremendous earnestness of people long ago, and you'll find men like Holy makes shame until the day he died. Try to get a little assurance from the word of God that perhaps he's got a saving interest in the ship, Lord of Christ.

You made a little decision, been a little like hell ever since, and you think you're going to go to heaven when you die. Of the Lord Jesus. It means that rebellion is so terrible, that lawlessness is so widespread, and obnoxious to God, except for his son to pour out his life.

And you'll pay for it with your soul. This is true. This is precious. The blood of Christ. Without shedding of blood, there's no remission. There's no remission. I had this unique experience. For nine months, I preached to a different crowd, every Lord's Day.

And I preached to them knowing that I would never preach to them again. They brought the young men in and kept them on the post for 13 weeks. And then they went somewhere else. The first seven weeks, I believe I'm right, they were confined, 30 ,000 precious young men to the post.

And the Jews were marched to chapel in formation. And the Protestants were marched to chapel and the Catholics. 1 ,600 young men would fill the theater. At 9 o 'clock on Sunday mornings, the sergeant would march 1 ,600 young men to the theater, and we'd have a 30-minute service.

As soon as that service was over, they'd march out. And as soon as the path was clear, there were 1 ,600 other young men waiting, and they'd have their service. They had five such services. Then the next Lord's Day, I preached at, say, 10 o 'clock, a different crowd.

For nine months, I preached to 1 ,600 young men. I had other services, but I preached to 1 ,600 young men who were marched to chapel. They had to attend, and that's the only chance I ever got to preach to them.

I was not allowed to give any sort of an invitation. I was supposed to follow an order, have everybody quote the Lord's Prayer, and I wouldn't do that, and I got in trouble, but they couldn't make me.

I said, I'm not going to allow an unsaved man to see our Father, because God isn't his Father. And we had a lot of fun, and I'd book him. But of course, I could not give what you call an invitation, because the young men weren't there because they wanted to be, like I hope you are.

They were there because there was march there. But they couldn't keep me from doing this. I threw away all the service and preached the same sermon, I guess, every time. For nine months, preached 1 ,600 boys a day, never preached to two different boys at the same time.

Just one shot. I was the only chaplain on that field that believed the gospel. We had some Baptist boys that preached as that, told them they ought not to get drunk in public, and they ought to be good.

Well, they already knew that, you know. Because I don't do no good telling a fellow what he ought to do. He already knows that. Ah, he needs access to power that he hasn't got. And I would say, now if any of you boys understand the relationship, the lack of it, to the Lord Jesus Christ, you write your name, squadron number, on the order of service and pass it to the ushers, and they will take it up at the close of the service.

And I would get hundreds of those men every day. Oh, I did as a chaplain, instead of passing out cigarettes and drinks and sponsoring dances and all that junk. I just had a prayer meeting going on all the time, my study.

I would get on the phone and call up the commander and say, I want you to send Torrance over to see me. And he would have to do it. Yeah, come this boy. And we would get in and lock the door. And he wanted to know the Lord, and that's what I saw now.

Preaching Christ to Soldiers Facing Judgment

I read one time when 64 great bombers got shot down on one flight over Germany. Eight boys to a bomber. That's way up in the neighborhood of 500 boys. Made a sortie over Germany. That's the most, I think, bombers that were shot down in any one flight.

And I wondered how many of those perhaps 500 young fliers and bombardiers and navigators ate to a bomber. I wonder how many of them, when I get to the judgment, I find out I had one chance to preach to them.

And they think I'm an old sourpuss. The Brother Jackson would just about say amen. They didn't have many opportunities to hear a chaplain preach on Christ to hell. When I get to the judgment, I'm going to be looking.

Some of the sows, and I preached to quite a few, they'd move them out. Nine months every Lord's Day, preached to 1 ,600 boys just one time. When I get to the judgment, I'm going to be looking, looking, looking.

How many of those precious boys I'll have to see sent to hell. Be a witness against them, just that one time. I didn't fool around talking to them about they ought to be good. I just had a little simple message.

There's just one remedy for the dark-dyed sin, and that's to have the merits of the Lord's light laid down, applied to you. Holy God. Lord, sending you to hell is to hang your son on a cross, and for you to be a partaker of that cross.

A Colonel's Last Opportunity to Hear the Gospel

A drinking colonel had his executive officer call me, and he said, Chaplain, the CO wants to see you as soon as you can get over to the office. I walked there. The old colonel had been my friend. All the chaplains, the straight men that had trouble with lying officers, they didn't give a hoot.

It's these religious guys that want you to keep from being honest with souls. And he said, Chaplain, I'm going to break a little rule here. But he sent the boys out on bidwack and said, if you want to, why don't you get a car?

I'll have one sent around. He said, you go out there and tell the captain. I said, you could hold a religious service. I know this. Ain't nobody supposed to know about this bidwacking business. That's when they're out there on seven-day alert.

And he said, the alert's done come in, and they've just got two days now till they'll be shipping out. And he said, why don't you go out there and tell the captain. They ain't got seven days no more. They've just got two.

He said, of course, this is Army secrets. He said, you go out there and get in trouble. And he was there violating the rules. Old heart, drinking heart, cussing Episcopalian. I talked to him and tears rolled down his cheeks.

I said, preacher, I'm too far gone. No hope for me. And so I got in the car and went way out in the country. And there were several hundred boys out there being on alert, getting ready. They knew most any time now they'd be packing their little rips, go to the port of embarkation over where the bullets were firing.

I told the captain, he cussed a little bit, said, well, if the colonel said so, it's all right. And he had a boy blow a horn and everybody came around and said, the chancellor's here and he's going to have a religious service and you boys want to attend.

Be all right. Said, I'll give you an hour. And everybody did. He told them, this is it. This is it. You boys are shipping out. They're scared. Anybody be scared of that since it's not coming out of the range.

I never faced those bullets, but I just don't believe you. You tell me you can go through that kind of war and not be scared. I don't believe you're a human being. And so they got out the little war gun and a fellow that is a beautiful white boy played the organ and a boy with teeth like pearl and skin as black as soot led to singing.

And they sat on the grass under some trees, passed out a few song books and pumped that organ. And that old colored boy led them singing, what can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus, what can make me whole again?

Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Down at the cross where my Savior died, cleansing from sin I cried. To my heart was the blood of pride. Glory to His name. And then I preached to them, I said, it's Christ or hell.

It's Christ or hell. It's to be identified with that one who was taken outside of a holy city and killed between two malefactors. So that when God looks at you, He says, as an old boy with this congregation, enable people, by Thy grace, to lay hold on the living Lord who's on a throne.

He got there by laying down His life on a bloody tree to pay the debt of sinners. Speak to hearts right now. If you came to this house of God this morning wanting an opportunity to identify yourself with this group of people by a letter, a promise of a letter, asking this church to baptize you, we want to give you an opportunity to do that thing this morning.

The Invitation to Trust Christ and Identify with His Church

And then we want to give people an opportunity to make this the initial time when you start out on an all-out search to be joined to the Lord Jesus Christ. We do not identify a physical move of salvation.

But the little woman didn't have to touch the hem of the garment of the Lord, but she thought she did. Either way on earth, you can publicly and privately from now until the day you die, begin to hang on to the skirts of the Lord Jesus Christ, crying faith to him, Lord have mercy on my soul.

We want to give you an opportunity to make that initial start this morning. If you want to come for prayer, you come. If you want to come for instruction, you come. If you want to come for baptism, you come.

If you understand what that implies, if you're here from some other place and you want to be identified with these people, you come. We're going to sing a little song while we stand, and that's the invitation.